Last week EA confirmed that it didn't have any Wii U titles in development. As if that wasn't enough of a slight against owners of Nintendo's console a developer's comments over the weekend dumped a whole can of gasoline on an already raging fire.

A series of tweets (which have since been deleted by the author but captured by this NeoGAF thread) from one of the software engineers at EA Sports' Canada studio responded to the news by posting disparaging comments via Twitter calling the console "crap" and suggesting that Nintendo give up on console hardware.

"The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet," tweeted Bob Summerwill, a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet of a link about EA's no-Wii U news. "Nintendo are walking dead at this point."

Summerwill didn't stop there either:

"Nintendo are still operating like it's 1990," he continues, saying it should have gotten out of the hardware business and made its Mario and Legend of Zelda franchises exclusives on competing consoles.

"Instead, they make this awful console," he added. Then, of EA's withdrawal from developing for Wii U, he said, "It is an utterly intentional decision to focus our resources on markets which actually matter."

"EA has a strong partnership and an active agreement with Nintendo to develop games for the WiiU. Last year we released Mass Effect 3 and several of our EA Sports titles on that platform. So far, we have not announced any new titles for Wii U this year, but that does not preclude more games in the future."

Of course, EA said that it has no Wii U games currently in development, so this statement is kind of at odds with the other one made late last week...

Comments

What many game designers need to understand is if you have poor social skills you should not be marketing the game or socializing with the public in regards to a product. Problem is game designers are pretty much nerds in the basement with poor social skills and they do not know how to communicate with the public. Studios like Radicial Entertainment have closed because of a failure to properly communicate with the public and the fact that they just keep arguing and insist that they are right over the customer. It's finally coming to a head that game designers who have no social or marketing skills are actually causing huge controversies just because they cannot talk to the general public. Or they just keep arguing with the public instead of listening to their customers so what ended up happening is a studio either closes down or someone ends up resigning to appease the masses. If there is gunadie another video game crash it's not going to be because there were no quality games it was because the games that are being made are being made for only a select few people and that these game designers are rejecting the average customer.

Nintendo systems have always been a step behind technology when compared to its competitors. For example, look at the Wii versus the 360 and PS3 and then the Gamecube versus the PS2 and Xbox. It has never been a problem for them back then and I don't see how this will be any different. As long as they have games that are "fun to play", they should do just fine. Some studios like to harness the power of the latest technology and the Wii U would not be the choice of console to do this. Likewise, some gamers want new and revolutionary graphics in which case the next Xbox and PS4 should do fine.

Your info is flawed. The Wii was the first system where Nintendo was the weakest system spec wise. The Gamecube had more raw power than the PS2 though was less efficient (a similar issue with the Xbox), the N64 was more powerful than the Playstation and Saturn and the SNES was more powerful than the Genesis.

Now you also have to consider that to date, the last time there was a parallel relationship between raw power and sales figures (aka best selling system was the most powerful) was the 16-bit generation. Since then the best selling system of each generation has been the least powerful system on the market. The current generation is still undecided as the new systems from Sony and Microsoft haven't been released yet.

All that said, the only references that Nintendo is "failing" with the WiiU is in comparison to the Wii sales. Compared to pretty much any other system so far they're selling on average if not slightly above.

The Wii was successful due to a brilliant marketing campaign. When the Wii was announced and for months people though it was a joke. All of a sudden they came up with suprise announcements like Snake in Super Smash Bros not to mention Wii Kiosks in every major Mall in America!
The Wii was released with little or no marketing and following the trend in the industry to make a tablet and assume people like tablets more than anything else.

It isn't EA itself that is saying it is crap, but one of the software engineers. Now saying it is crap and dragging this console's name through the mud is quite immature for a public statement. EA and Nintendo have a seemingly on and off relationship for years. This obviously is not helping.

However the opinion is: Is this crap? As an owner of all 3 major consoles of last gen, and also that I own a N64 and Gamecube.... I think the WiiU is lacking. Do EA games translate well to the system? Not really. I played ME3 on the WiiU and found that it was much better....on the PC. The WiiU was not enough of a stepping stone to bring over the PS3 and XBox 360 (not to mention their high-tech replacements are coming soon is not a good sign for Nintendo).

In my humble opinion: The WiiU is Nintendo's equivalent to Sega's Dreamcast. Hear me out: Dreamcast was and is a great system. I loved the hell out of it. It had a few but rather great games for it. The LCD screen on the controller was 10 years ahead of its time. Also the fact it had online game capability was fantastic. However not a large line of games and that its rival, the PS2 was slightly more advanced and had a huge line of 3rd party developers behind it was more or less a kiss of death. The same can be said for Nintendo now. Just replace Dreamcast with WiiU.

Bad on an EA employee for saying what they said. However Nintendo needs to bring itself back to front and center (in my opinion).

Poor online/store? Goes totally against what most over publishers/devs are saying.

IMO EA wanted to pull out of Wii U devlopment ages ago, but had to prduce something. So we got two crappy EA Sports games based on last years engine with current stats (which made them a hard sale), a Mass Effect 3 port just before a re-release of all 3 came out on other platforms. Only fly in the ointment was Need for Speed, since Criteon actually put effort into it (and going against this guy, praised the hardware and made it look/run better than the other consoles versions. Oops). Just wished it was know WHY EA wanted to do this. Somethings up, and its not just sales or the whole Origin thing. The fatc that they still support the Vita (which isnt selling that well) while seemingly abandoning the 3DS (just because its by Nintendo) makes you wonder....